As world tensions mount, a young president must contend with his own bellicose military and a mercurial communist dictator to avoid a nuclear showdown.

Sounds like President Obama trying to defuse North Korea's threats to nuke America.

For real international drama, revisit 1962 when fledgling President John F. Kennedy demonstrated steely nerve as he and his advisors deliberated among themselves and with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Kennedy’s political courage and geopolitical vision come alive in "To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis’’ at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Fusing high stakes drama with a fly-on-the wall view of secret negotiations, this deeply-satisfying exhibition captures Kennedy’s finest hour a year before his untimely death.

During an opening day tour, library and museum curator Stacey Bredhoff said the exhibit was designed so viewers "could feel in their guts how much was at stake and how close we came to nuclear catastrophe.’’ Mission accomplished.

Created jointly by the Kennedy Library and National Archives and Records Administration, it premiered in Washington, D.C., last fall on the 50th anniversary the crisis that ran from Oct. 14-28 in 1962.

Visitors will see remarkable artifacts that factored in the crisis deliberations including aerial reconnaissance photos from U-2 spy planes of the Soviet missile sites, CIA personality profiles of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro – "highly neurotic and unstable a personality’’ - and JFK’s own doodles made at the height of the crisis.

A recreated fallout shelter picturing a necktie-wearing Dad playing with his kids suggests how oblivious some Americans were about the devastating power of nuclear weapons.

Entering the library’s new 3,000 square-foot gallery, visitors will see Kennedy explain the origins of the crisis in a televised address on Oct. 22, 1962, when he gravely tells the American public the Soviets were installing missiles in Cuba that would provide "a nuclear strike capability against the Western hemisphere.’’

Featuring declassified secret recordings, "To the Brink’’ lets visitors eavesdrop at six interactive listening stations on the president’s Executive Committee which discussed, debated and wrangled about how to get the missiles out of Cuba without starting World War III.

Recorded on a suitcase-sized Tandberg reel-to-reel recorder, the tapes let visitors listen to one of the most crucial secret debates in U.S. history.

Listen as the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, discuss, debate and wrangle with – each other – and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, CIA Director John McCone, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and military leaders, General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay and a handful of others.

While the world teetered on the brink of thermonuclear war, their discussions are brutally frank, driven by personal agendas and equally illluminating and frightening.

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Historian Sheldon Stern, who wrote "The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis,’’ said declassification of the tapes has "significantly altered’’ our understanding of how Kennedy stood alone by supporting a compromise to remove the missiles without invading Cuba.

The tapes show, he said, how Robert Kennedy in his memoir’’ "Thirteen Days’’ recast his role to appear he supported his brother’s conciliatory approach when, in fact, he stood with the majority calling for an invasion. "Except for JFK, they were all hawks,’’ said Stern.

Despite enormous pressure, JFK held his ground as the lone voice opposing the invasion of Cuba, which he feared would trigger a Soviet response that could drag the world into a nuclear holocaust.

Opening in Boston as Korea ratchets up its nuclear threats and Iran continues its antagonistic rhetoric, "To the Brink’’ provides timely lessons about making crucial decisions in the face of domestic and international pressure.

Museum Director Thomas Putnam said Kennedy’s refusal to cave in to pressure from his own advisers and the Soviets and still get the missiles out through political compromise showed "restraint is often the best course and force should be the last resort.’’